In a series of tweets, the Taliban assured China that Afghan territory would not be used against the security of any country….reports Asian Lite News
A Taliban delegation led by its chief negotiator Abdul Ghani Baradar on Wednesday met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussed the current Afghan situation.
The current situation in Afghanistan and the peace process were discussed during the meeting, said Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem.
In a series of tweets, the Taliban assured China that Afghan territory would not be used against the security of any country.
Meanwhile, China pledged to continue and expand its cooperation with the Afghan people, saying that they would not interfere in Afghanistan’s affairs, but would help solve problems and build peace.
This comes as Taliban-led violence has increased in Afghanistan as foreign troops are withdrawing from the war-torn country.
Taliban has escalated its offensive against security forces and civilians. They are rapidly gaining territory in Afghanistan.
‘Moreover, they are imposing archaic rules on the captured territories and being a Sunni outfit, the Shias fear sectarian violence against them.
Beijing has been closely watching the progress of US troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and sought to play a bigger role in the country.
At a meeting with his Afghan and Pakistani counterparts in June, Wang vowed to “bring the Taliban back into the political mainstream” and offered to host intra-Afghan peace talks.
“China’s position is that this should be resolved within Afghanistan. And the situation in Afghanistan should not threaten China’s security,” a source said, naming security in Xinjiang and Chinese investments in the region as some of Beijing’s top concerns.
China previously hosted the Taliban in 2019, when a nine-member delegation travelled to Beijing and met Deng Xijun, then special representative for Afghanistan.
Taliban are normal civilians: Imran
The Taliban are not some military outfits but normal civilians, said Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, asking how the country is supposed to hunt them down when it has three million Afghan refugees at the border.
In an interview with PBS NewsHour aired Tuesday night, Khan stressed that Pakistan hosts three million Aghan refugees of which the majority are Pashtuns, the same ethnic group as the Taliban fighters.
“Now, there are camps of 500,000 people; there are camps of 100,000 people. And Taliban are not some military outfits, they are normal civilians. And if there are some civilians in these camps, how is Pakistan supposed to hunt these people down? How can you call them sanctuaries?” he argued.
When asked about alleged Taliban safe havens in Pakistan, the Prime Minister responded: “Where are these safe-havens? There are three million refugees in Pakistan who are the same ethnic group as the Taliban…”
Pakistan has been long accused of helping the Taliban militarily, financially and with intelligence inputs in their fight against the Afghanistan government, but Imran Khan dismissed these accusations as “extremely unfair”.
He said that thousands of Pakistanis lost their lives in the aftermath of the US war in Afghanistan when “Pakistan had nothing to do with what happened” on September 11, 2001, in New York.
According to a report prepared for the UN Security Council, about 6,000 terrorists of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) are operating on the Afghan side of the border. While the TTP has “distinctive anti-Pakistan objectives”, it also supports the Afghan Taliban militants inside Afghanistan against Afghan Forces, the report by the UN Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team said.
UN monitors note that TTP “has distinctive anti-Pakistan objectives but also supports the Afghan Taliban militarily inside Afghanistan against Afghan government forces”. (ANI)
